while we marched along Rue St.
Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd. He thought I was
going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the
Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his
loaf of bread. Skenedonk would certainly trail me, and find a way to be
of use, unless he broke into trouble as readily as I had done.

My guards crossed the river in the neighborhood of palaces, and came by
many windings to a huge pile rearing its back near a garden place, and
there I was turned over to jailers and darkness. The entrance was
unwholesome. A man at a table opened a tome which might have contained
all the names in Paris. He dipped his quill and wrote by candlelight.

"Political offender or common criminal?" he inquired.

"Political offender," the officer answered.

"What is he charged with?"

"Trying to assassinate the emperor in his post-chaise."

"La, la, la!" the recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put
in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends
him:--only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in
the act, was this fellow?"

"With the knife in his hand."

"What name?" the recorder inquired.

I had thought on the answer, and told him merely that my name was
Williams.

"Eh, bien, Monsieur Veeleeum. Take him to the east side among the
political offenders," said the master-jailer to an assistant or turnkey.

"But it's full," responded the turnkey.

"Shove him in some place."

They searched me, and the turnkey lighted another candle. The meagerness
of my output was beneath remark. When he had led me up a flight of
stone steps he paused and inquired,

"Have you any money?"

"No."

"So much the worse for you."

"What is the name of this prison?" I asked.

"Ste. Pelagie," he answered. "If you have no money, and expect to eat
here, you better give me some trinket to sell for you."

"I have no trinkets to give you."

He laughed.

"Your shirt or breeches will do."

"Are men shut up here to starve?"

The jailer shrugged.

"The bread is very bad, and the beans too hard to eat. We do not furnish
the rations; it is not our fault. The rule here is nothing buys nothing.
But sleep in your breeches while you can. You will soon be ready enough
to eat them."

I was ready enough to eat them then, but forbore to let him know it. The
whole place was damp and foul. We passed along a corridor less t